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City plans on making buildings ‘solar-ready’

Resident advocacy key to progress on renewable energy

By SAMANTHA STEVENS the daily northwestern @its_samstevens

Solar panels power three of the city’s buildings: the Evanston Ecology Center, Levy Senior Center and Evanston Water Treatment Plant. Now, the city is planning to contract outside developers to increase its solar energy usage.

Evanston plans to use solar power purchase agreements, which involve having outside developers finance, install and maintain the solar panels. In exchange, the city would buy power generated by the panels from the developer, in a system that would minimize the upfront costs of solar power for Evanston.

Sustainability and Resilience Coordinator Cara Pratt said solar power purchase agreements are a financially sustainable way for the city to install solar panels.

“Any city facility that has appropriate sunlight and a new enough roof should eventually have solar panels,”

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Pratt said. “That’s what we’re working towards, and in the past, it’s just been a matter of resource constraints.”

Two key components ensure a structure is solarready, according to City Engineer Lara Biggs.

The building’s roof must be suitable for solar panels, which generally involves being fairly flat and unshaded. The building’s electrical panels must also have enough capacity to use the solar power generated, Biggs said.

“Instead of worrying about how to install solar, now we worry about how to make our buildings solar-ready so that they’re ready for solar installation,” Biggs said.

The Robert Crown Community Center, completed in 2020, was designed to have solar panels, though they have yet to be installed.

The city is now preparing to solicit proposals from private companies to install these panels.

“Our first focus is on installing solar at the Robert Crown Community Center, which always contemplated having solar on the roof,” Pratt said. “Moving forward for any new municipal roof,

» See SOLAR CITY, page 6